Chapter 752 — The Drowned Servant

CHAPTER 752

The Drowned Servant

The man lay on a plank in the watch house yard with a wet sheet over him.

The canal water had made his face puffy, but not so much that it couldn’t be recognised. His sleeves were long, and they’d been pulled down over his wrists even in death. Somebody had pulled them down again after the watch took him out of the water.

“Wu Er,” Ke Lianshu said unhappily. “The banquet servant. Yes. That’s him.”

“Fell in,” Sergeant Chai said. “That’s what the report says. Drunk, by the smell of him, on the canal steps at the East Bridge. It happens every month.”

“Who wrote the report?” Shi Feng asked.

“The captain of the night watch,” Sergeant Chai said. He didn’t look at anyone when he said it. “He closed it an hour ago. Accident. Body to the paupers’ ground by noon.”

“An hour,” Shi Feng said.

“An hour,” Sergeant Chai agreed flatly. “A dead man can’t bear witness.”

Ji Yuanhe had come with them. He’d insisted. He stood at the end of the plank with his hands folded, and he looked at the drowned man’s face for a long time.

Then he looked at the sleeves.

“I know him,” Ji Yuanhe said quietly.

Everyone turned.

“At the screening,” Ji Yuanhe said. “On the platform. He brought water for Young Master Shi. In a ladle.” He held up one hand, as if he could still feel it. “It smelled of grey lotus root. I swapped it. He went into the crowd, and the household said he’d left without notice.”

Shi Feng looked down at the man on the plank.

Shi Feng was angry. The same servant had reached Ji Yuanhe at the screening and entered the princess’s hall at the banquet. Whoever sent him had used him twice. The first time, they’d wanted to see what a tired mid Deity Transformation man did. The second time, the cup hadn’t been for Shi Feng at all. It had been for the princess’s own hall, in front of the Clan Court.

“You’re sure, Master Ji?” Ke Lianshu asked.

“I counted his steps,” Ji Yuanhe said. “He walked with the left foot short. He still has the left foot short.”

Nobody argued with that.

Sergeant Chai rubbed his face with both hands.

“I can’t open it again,” Sergeant Chai said to Shi Feng, very quietly. “Not with what I’ve got. A drunk servant, a captain’s seal and an old man who counts steps. You understand.”

“I understand,” Shi Feng said. “Write down what Master Ji said and keep it. A closed report doesn’t make his testimony worthless.”

Sergeant Chai looked at him for a moment, and then he went and got a brush.

Long Caili received him in a small tea room above the Buying Hall that afternoon, veiled as she was in every room he’d ever seen her in.

It was a plain room, and it surprised him. There was one table, two cushions and a window over the market. Her account book sat on the table next to the teapot. She poured for him herself.

“Your attendant has a good memory,” Long Caili said.

“He’s a 2 Mark,” Shi Feng said. “He remembers everything he’s ever smelled. It used to be all he had.”

Long Caili nodded. She hadn’t dismissed Ji Yuanhe as an unreliable old man, and Shi Feng appreciated that.

“My brothers’ people always clean up the same day,” Long Caili said. “A servant who’s seen. A clerk who’s talked. They’re very tidy. It’s the one thing about them I admire.”

She lifted the hem of her veil an inch and drank her tea.

“Which brother?” Shi Feng asked.

Long Caili picked up the teapot and poured more tea into his cup, although it was still half full. Then she poured more into her own.

She didn’t answer, and she wasn’t going to. Saying it would give it a name, and a name could be carried to the Clan Court and the throne. Shi Feng understood why she wouldn’t name him. He’d heard enough to know this was a struggle inside the imperial family.

“The tea’s good,” Shi Feng said.

“It’s from my own garden in the south,” Long Caili said. “It costs forty silver a jin. You’re drinking about two silver of it.”

“Then I’ll finish it,” Shi Feng said, lifting his cup. “You shouldn’t waste good tea on a man who can’t taste it.”

Something moved in her eyes above the veil. It was gone almost at once.

“Ke Lianshu thinks I should end the contest,” Long Caili said. “He says it isn’t safe. A guard nearly died in my hall, and two of my candidates have been ambushed in the street.”

“Two?” Shi Feng asked. “Who else was attacked?”

“You, twice,” Long Caili said. “I count you as two.”

“Will you end it?” Shi Feng asked.

“If I end it, everyone in the capital learns that I can be frightened out of my own pavilion by a cup of tea,” Long Caili said coldly. “Fear’s the most expensive thing a princess can be seen to buy. No. It goes on.”

She opened her account book and turned it so he could see one page. It was a list of herbs, with prices beside them. The top line had been crossed out and written again, three times, each time higher.

“And now,” Long Caili said, “the Tang have found a new way to be tidy.”